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Haiku Artwork Revealed.
"HAIKU" NEW YUSA ALBUM SCHEDULED TO BE RELEASED ON JUNE 2008
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Influences
Influences are less conscious than people suppose. If the music you do is sincere and original, when you are answering about your influences you’re probably talking about what you would like to see reflected in your music, or about the music you really like among those that preceded you. So, taking the risk of answering more about my musical preferences that about my influences, here you have only a part of it: Omara Portuondo, Elena Burke; the Nueva Trova and their paradigmatic Silvio and Pablo; Santiago Feliú from the next generation of trovadours; Rubén Blades and Willie Colón; the Cuban son, salsa and timba: (that I used to play when I was in Soneras Son) NG La Banda, Irakere, Los Van Van; Cuban fusion bands like Síntesis and Mezcla (where I also played briefly); Weather Report, Kool & the Gang, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Cindy Lauper, Prince; the rock & roll bands like Led Zeppelin, Rush, Def Leppard; Jeff Buckley; Brazilian music like Gismonti, Gal Costa, Chico Buarque, Maria Bethania, Roberto Carlos, Elza Soares, Lenine; Keith Jarrett, Chik Corea, Michel Camilo, Herbie Hancock, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Jaco Pastorius, Sting, Gema & Pável, Habana Abierta, Casandra Wilson, Erikah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Me’Shell Ndegeocello. I mean all the music I have heard once and then I choose to listen again. I’m also touched by the people I use to play with. I’m a kind of musical sponge and I don’t know if it’s good or bad.__________________________________________________________________________________
"FLASH" Yusa Live in Vence, France 2006
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"NAUFRAGIO" Yusa Live in Vence, France 2006
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"TOMANDO EL CENTRO" Yusa & Ramiro Musotto.Cité de La Musique.
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"CHIQUICHACA" Yusa ao vivo no Brasil
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Cuban Zen: Yusa’s Lived Poetry Shines on Haiku.
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A haiku, as poet Octavio Paz put it, is lived poetry. For Yusa, the Cuban singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist,
this means the swaying of the sea, the hue and cry of the city, a toy’s rattle,
a loved one’s dreams.
Compared to everyone from Joan Armatrading to Erykah Badu,
Yusa captures the intimate poetry lived in
the changing, imminently musical Havana on her latest
album Haiku (Tumi Music; U.S. release: June 10, 2008).
This is not the Havana evoked by the elder statesmen of Cuban music
popular in Europe and the U.S.
Instead, it is a vibrant, young, thoroughly modern musical metropolis
echoing with funk, jazz, rap, and soul,
but keeping its connections to its deep African and Caribbean heritage.
“The Cuban music scene is rather unknown abroad, and the information
that comes out of Cuba is always partial,
as if Cuba was outdated and there were no modern, urban music or
constant fusions,”
Yusa explains. “I believe this is its most unknown side: the richness and
diversity of Cuban music.
Cuba is a young country, but with a very alive culture, the fruit of
many cultural mixtures.”
This diversity shines through on Haiku, revealing Yusa’s personal ties
to both old and new ways.
The title track, “Haiku de paz” (Peace Haiku), was born from a melody
that Yusa had roaming around in her
head for weeks, but she couldn’t find the right lyrics to fit it.
An unusual solution soon presented itself:
“One day, a dear friend told me something she had dreamed, and that shaped
the four short verses in this song.
I liked the minimalism, and I understood this as one of the features of
this record: The essential.”
This essence harkens back to Cuban tradition, as the song’s chorus, sung
by friends from the Afro-Cuban rock
band Síntesis, praises the white-clad Orisha god of purity and the mind, Obatalá.
Old meets new, personal meets universal, in a Cuban Zen embrace.
Two essential features of Yusa’s experience growing up in Havana
—the city and the sea—resound in her music.
The sounds of the city, from car horns to children’s cries, flit through
Yusa’s songs, while her inner world echoes
in the lyrics. This subtle soundscape was gently encouraged
by Haiku’s Brazilian producer, Alê Siqueira, who has
produced songs for Marisa Monte and Bebel Gilberto and whose
work with Brazilian pop great Carlinhos Brown
won him a Latin Grammy in 2004.
Siqueira’s unique, playful approach to recording meshed perfectly
with the delicate, intimate songs Yusa brought
with her into the studio. To perfect these songs, as Yusa laid down
tracks on twenty different instruments,
“We played a lot. Everyday we’d bring to the studio details of sounds,
tunes from toys; we created sounds in the
studio out of the most unsuspected things,” Yusa laughs. “We had fun
and we were free until the sound we wanted
came to us.”
Yusa’s love of music and early musical training is intertwined with that
other constant of Havana life, the sea.
As a young girl, Yusa (born Yusimil Lopez Bridon) would sit by the sea
after school, doing homework and strumming
the guitar. “I have a natural feeling for the sea because my father
was a merchant seaman, and I have always been
surrounded by water,” Yusa mused.
She began studying music in elementary school at age six, later going
on to a well-respected Cuban conservatory,
where she became close friends with many of her future collaborators
and acquired her unflagging attention to
musical detail. She also made the unusual choice to devote her musical
studies to the trés, an instrument more often
associated with male musicians from the Cuban countryside.
Yusa, in fact, was the only student in her graduating class to major
in the instrument.
After a stint playing Cuban traditional music with a group of fellow
graduates, Yusa broke new ground as their
group morphed into a jazz ensemble and she took up the upright bass.
While later musical explorations led Yusa
to the electric bass, in part as a member of Brazilian roots rocker Lenine’s band,
her most recent work has been a
reconciliation and reconnection with the guitar and the trés.
“The guitar is the instrument I use the most, for many
reasons,” Yusa notes. “One of them, the one that fascinated me most
was its minstrel spirit.
I realized I could carry it anywhere. Wherever I am, there’s always a
guitar nearby.”
Capturing the minstrel spirit associated with the guitar is part of what
Yusa calls the “integrity” or balance sought
by roots-oriented artists like Lenine and herself. “I feel an almost mystical
respect for my traditions and my roots.
But I’m a woman of these times, a musician from now and not from
other epochs. And I would like to be faithful
to both sides, to love the parents as much as the children.”
Finding balance and peace between past and present is an ongoing
challenge as Cuba faces a new era.
But Yusa looks to the future with great hope for her country’s burgeoning
music scene: “When creative people react
to new vital experiences, new narratives arise, new ways of making
and saying,” Yusa reflects. “I hope that
the changes will have an impact in the way Cuban music is promoted
and disseminated, in its institutions.
I trust this, with a lot of optimism. And with effort, too, because we
all have got to be part of changes for good.”
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Yusa! me encantó tu trabajo! ahora quisiera saber si cantarás en La Trastienda o en Notorious, ya que en éste último lugar es en donde te vi anunciada, me confirmas? Cariños desde Buenos Aires
OYEEEEE SINVERGUENZAAAAA JE JE JE J JE QUE BOLA NO ME ESCRIBES NI UNAS LETRICAS CHICA ESTAS DE MADRE!!!!!! BUENO UN BESITO PARA DARSI Y PARA TI HAAAAA Y A MARTINNNN EL CEJUUUUU MICHAEL
Amiga, yo quiero saber , se esta tudo bueno contigo!!!gustaria de encontrar te algun dia por ai ou en Brasil, para tocarmos juntos!te adoro! besos Diogo Brown Bass
yusa meda tremenda alegria berte que estes triunfando ya que nos criamos juntos mi hermanita es carlos el hermano de ramon estamos aqui en miami aber si cuando te toque venir por aca copartimos y descargamos repondeme mi correo es arzola17@hotmail.com y mi pajina de myspace es carloslarzola espero respuestas tuya yusa se te quiere chaoooooooooo
Greetings YUSA, Respect To You !!!!!!! I Give Thanks For Reaching Out, Making The Connection And The Friendship !!!!!!! Please Stay Close At JOHNNYALLEN. COM Blessed Love
